A Guide for Poor Film Photographers

Film prices have been increasing ever since the popularity of the analog photography space has started to take off. Kodak and Fujifilm have quickly increased the prices of their 35mm Film and 120 medium format Film offerings like Kodak Portra 400 and 800, Ektachrome, Ektar 100, Kodak Gold, Kodak Color Plus, Fujifilm C200, Fujifilm Pro 400H. Cinestill have continued to produce new and interesting consumer film stocks like Cinestill 800T, Cinestill 50D and Cinestill 400D. But, just like Kodak and Fujifilm, they are burdened by supply chain issues and they cannot meet the increased demand for color negative film. The increased demand can in-part be attributed to popular film photographers like Willem Verbeeck, Graindays, Joe Greer etc., which also popularized older cameras again like the Leica M6, Mamiya RB/RZ67, Mamiya 7, Pentax 67, Hasselblad X-Pan, Contax T2, and Canon AE-1. Unfortunately for film photographers, analog photography is getting more and more expensive and people need to resort to more budget friendly options like Ilford or Fomapan black and white film stocks. In this video I talk about the cheapest possible way to shoot film by utilizing bulk loaders, huge film canisters and some AI photography tools. This is a fun take on how you can get and use 35mm film effectively for cheap.

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[whosjozikolnik]

"you enjoy photography so your time's worth nothing"
bro I feel attacked 😭

[ano]

Rolling your own film and developing your own negatives is taking me back to my student days… 20 years of technology and back to where I started

[countduku]

Bold of you to assume I can afford to use lightroom

[neilpiper]

I use Fomapan 200 and develop with Rodinal.
I print the best in my windowless bathroom darkroom on my Gnome condenser enlarger through Schneider Componon S enlarging lens.
I use Ilford multigrade paper.
I have been doing this since the 1960s when I was a hippie, now I guess I'm called a hipster.
Oh yes and I play Vinyl, use a fountain pen and wear a mechanical watch.
I am on trend with ccd sensor digital cameras like my Nikon D40x and my old 2005 Ricoh GR digital 8 megapixel camera. Peace brothers

[chuckratcliff]

Digital shutterbug here. Working on a project that the client wanted me to use film. The irony of using digital to scan is not lost on me…

[jambob]

Great video - You could buy all the equipment (Tank, Changing bag, extension tubes, etc) for roughly the same as you already paid for the film + monobath, so the price per image is still only 0.20 moneys, and will decrease the more you use it!

[charababis]

Every time you upload I just watch immediately, you're my favorite channel

[khanscombe]

Blooming brilliant! We support u. Big up yourself m8!
Actually, I did do this. The lab. My dad already had the gear. Even the print enlarger. Although I used my Nikon slide / film scan.
Now I need to try that Ai thingy. It looks fun

[Otokichi]

In the 1970's Freestyle Sales Co. was my non-Kodak film supplier. The "Classic European black-and-white film" turned out to be Ilford HP3 and FP3. "East European black-and-white film" was ORWO, which worked just fine with D-76 1:1 for every film. I did try Agfa Rodinal, since ORWO films were said to be a better match. Bulk 135 film was advertised as "a Penny a frame" when Kodak was the Rochester Giant. These days, "do it yourself" still saves money and "electronic scanning" is an added thing that I could only dream about back then.;)

[therealquade]

Hey, rather than using AI to colorize your film, there's an alternative. It's slightly more time intensive, and uses 3x as much film, because you gotta take each picture 3 times in a row, but it works and all you need is some cheap clear colored plastic. Use the cheap clear colored plastic of red, green, and blue, as filters that go in front of the camera, one picture red, one green, one blue. your pictures will do best with a tripod for this. I don't know if it would be better to have the color screen/filters attached to the camera or tripod, i'm just going from an other video i watched, but once you have your red green and blue (or cyan, yellow, magenta, and regular black and white if you wanna have more crisp color for even more film use), you then digitally align them, and recompose from RGB or CMYK in something like GIMP (which is free). The 2 issues with this are that it uses more film per picture, and requires you take the exact same photo several times, which means no photographing anything that moves, unless you want absolutely strange technicolor ghosts. Personally I *do* want the strange technicolor ghosts, but that's just me. The way I learned this was from a video by Matt Gray (MattGrayYES) On how to use a gameboy camera to take color photos. the gameboy camera was 2-bit, 4-color grey-scale, and using red/green/blue filters in front of the lens, through simple multiplication, that's 64 colors that could be reproduced, and it worked. since B&W film isn't just 4 digital values, The colorspace is actually quite huge. His video referenced a photo taken with basically the same technique back between 1905 and 1915, and showed that photo from the library of congress, and it's gorgeous. back to this video, since you've split the cost of 3 rolls into 18 rolls, even using 3 shots per picture, it's still 7 rolls of color for the cost of 3, rather than 18 rolls of black and whites. Now, if it sounds like I don't have experience with actually doing this, it's because I don't. I'm in the process of trying to decide if I want to get into this as a hobby. Except instead of trying to take traditionally good photos, I want to take weird trippy looking photos by doing weird stuff with the film and possibly weird stuff with the developer. I saw a different video about making a film developer out of Vitamin C and Aspirin tablets disolved in something (video was by a channel called Flesh Simulator, and he also has a video on Infra-red color film techniques, though film isn't his main thing on the channel), and yet another video by another channel (thought emporium) about Microfilm and using it to create diffraction gratings. and it's just getting my noggin joggin'. I've also tried databending/datamoshing with digital cameras, and I'm curious what kind of weird stuff I could do with actual film. I'm just trying to decide if it's worth the initial investments for camera, developer tools, and the physical space that it takes up.

[ErikBassan]

I wish more of the creators out there were that entertaining yet informative😄

[MStrong]

And then you decide to go and make your new cheap black and white bulk film 3x as expensive by buying some extra equipment for trichrome photography

[francisbombus]

Super Video! Finde ich cool, was du dir für eine Mühe gemacht hast. Preset habe ich gekauft. Kanal habe ich abonniert. Freue mich auf mehr ✌🏼

[chrisyouthink]

The title really intrigued me until I saw the first 30 seconds. Please don’t get me wrong, the beginning was quite promising. But why should I buy a black-and-white film and then digitize it? By the way, photographing negatives with a digital camera and also using them up may seem like a good solution at first, but in the long run, it’s not very economical. The worst part is using AI to colorize black-and-white film; I might as well not bother at all. Analog presets in Lightroom make more sense, don’t they?

[nahiyannasernn]

It was so refreshing to watch this video. Brilliantly made

[CookieMonster-nthh]

85 bucks for the film loader, 10 bucks for 5 empty rolls, about 45 bucks for a film development starter pack plus whatever the scanning solution costs. but note that all of these costs will shrink comparatively the more you do it.

[wrenchforahammer]

Thanks! You answered so many questions. Good job

[meirsolomon]

Stumbled upon your channel. Love it! Liked and subscribed!

[dovydaskaminskas]

I once bought 40 expired disposable cameras. I paid for them, if I remember correctly 10eur. Took the film canisters out of them, they where 400iso 12 exposures C41. I use them as iso 100-200, and develop in diy B&W developer. It doesn't get any cheaper than this.

[Mia-cefj]

I love the intro, i also spend too much on records. This video was so real